#408-Breathless/Jean-Luc Godard•Restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director of photography Raoul Coutard•Archival interviews with director Jean-Luc Godard, and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and Jean-Pierre Melville•New video interviews with Coutard, assistant director Pierre Rissient, and filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker•New video essays: filmmaker and critic Mark Rappaport’s “Jean Seberg” and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum’s “Breathless as Film Criticism”•Chambre 12, Hotel de suede, an eighty-minute French documentary about the making of Breathless, with members of the cast and crew•Charlotte et son Jules, a 1959 short film by Godard, starring Belmondo•French theatrical trailer•New and improved English subtitle translation•PLUS: A booklet featuring writings from Godard, film historian Dudley Andrew, François Truffaut’s original film treatment, and Godard’s scenario

Canadian director Allan King is one of cinema’s best-kept secrets. Over the course of fifty years, King shuttled between features and shorts, big-screen cinema and episodic television, comedy and drama, fiction and nonfiction. Within this remarkably varied career, it was with his cinema-verité-style documentaries—his “actuality dramas,” as he called them—that he left his greatest mark on film history. These startlingly intimate studies of lives in flux—emotionally troubled children, warring spouses, and the terminally ill—are riveting, at times emotionally overwhelming, and always depicted without narration or interviews. Humane, cathartic, and important, Allan King’s spontaneous portraits of the everyday demand to be seen.

WarrendaleAllan King, 1967For his enthralling first feature, Allan King brought his cameras to a home for psychologically disturbed young people. The stunning Warrendale won the Prix d’art et d’essai at Cannes and a special docu­mentary award from the National Society of Film Critics.

A Married CoupleAllan King, 1969Intense and hectic, frightening and funny, A Married Couple is ultimately about the eternal power struggle in romantic relationships, as well as entrenched gender roles on the cusp of change

Come On ChildrenAllan King, 1972In the early 1970s, ten teenagers (five boys and five girls) leave behind parents, school, and all other authority figures to live on a farm for ten weeks. Come On Children is a vivid rendering of one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable—and ultimately directionless—countercultures.

Memory for Max, Claire, Ida, and CompanyAllan King, 2005For four months, King follows the daily routines of eight patients suffering from dementia and memory loss; the result is searing, compassionate drama that can bring to the viewer a greater understanding of his or her loved ones.

"The most dementing of all modern sins: the inability to distinquish excellence from success."-David Hare

Yeah, a little disappointed we're not getting that extended cut of The Thin Red Line, but that still looks like a sweet release and definitely one I'll be picking up. Will probably pick up Charade in hi-def, too. Do I need to see Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence?